Contentious Actors on Social Media and
Implications for Advocacy in Digital Democracy

Allison Koh

PhD Researcher

Department of Political Economy
King’s College London
July 4, 2023

Background

Education 🎓

PhD in Political Science at the Hertie School, exp. 2023
MPP in Policy Analysis at the Hertie School, 2020
BSc in Economics and Asian Studies at Tulane University, 2016

Methods Experience 📊

Observational and quasi-experimental research designs
Computational social science
Social media data and APIs
Surveys

Affiliations 👥

Starting with a small summary on my CV…

I am currently a PhD researcher at the Hertie School’s Centre for International Security. My dissertation looks at online behavior around digital autocrats on Twitter on and I plan on submitting my dissertation this fall.

I did my Masters in Public Policy at the Hertie School, where I learned many of the computational methods that I apply in my dissertation research and other strands of work.

BSc in Economics and Asian Studies from Tulane, where I first learned the ropes of social science research, including how to code in Stata and R

As I’ve highlighted in my application, I have a wide variety of methods experience that matches well with this research post, including:

Observational and quasi-experimental research designs, which I use in my dissertation
Computational social science: mostly self-taught, been personally driven to learn about the world through big data and take on the challenges of using digital traces to operationalize complex phenomena
Social media/webscraping/APIs: working for Anita Gohdes, social media data collection, querying data from APIs, and documenting data processes. Also teaching a course on webscraping
Surveys: worked with data generated from surveys conducted in China and Nigeria in prior research assistantships
Of course, this is not an exhaustive list- through summer schools and my time consulting on statistical computing with the Hertie School’s data science lab, I have rather extensive experience learning methods on the fly

Outside of the Hertie School, I am also affiliated with

NYU’s Center for Social Media and Politics: spent some time there working on empirical work for my dissertation
UNC’s Center for Information, Technology, and Public Life: engaged more critically with broader topics related to my research in working groups on transnational information, feedback sessions and support groups among early career researchers
SCRIPTS Cluster of Excellence based at the Free University of Berlin, where I completed some of my PhD coursework as part of the Berlin Graduate School for Global and Transregional Studies. Have also taught and TAed technical workshops for researchers in this cluster throughout my masters and PhD

Current Research

Pro-Government Social Media on the Global Stage

Increasing importance of foreign platforms in states’ social media strategies
How do authoritarian regimes use social media to shape the global public sphere?
- What is the strategic use of foreign platforms for deterring diaspora dissent?
- How do pro-government actors evade accountability for attacking activists abroad?
- Do sudden changes in platform policy affect the global influence of state actors?

My dissertation focuses on “Pro-Government Social Media on the Global Stage”, in which I conceptualize and explore how pro-government actors from authoritarian regimes can leverage the vulnerabilities of social media to influence transnational information flows, even on platforms like Twitter where their governments do not have direct provision over content moderation.

The maps shown here on the left illustrates the global implications of my dissertation research. The map on top highlights that state repression isn’t just a domestic phenomenon. Repressive governments target prominent individuals in exile and diaspora communities around the world, which include many democracies. The map below it illustrates the global attribution of influence operations on Meta’s platforms; foreign influence operations that governments around the world use influence campaigns to manipulate the domestic politics of a targeted region. Not just autocracies, also democracies.
In line with these patterns over the last few years, we’ve observed that states are increasingly integrating foreign platforms into their strategies for controlling information flows beyond their borders.

Overarching RQ: How do authoritarian regimes use social media to shape the global public sphere?

This dissertation seeks to uncover the inner workings of state-sponsored content on foreign social media platforms, with three research questions in mind:

What is the strategic use of foreign platforms for deterring diaspora dissent?
How do pro-government actors evade accountability for attacking activists abroad?
Do sudden changes in platform policy affect the global influence of state actors?

The first paper of my dissertation looks at this first question, which carves out the research gap that I aim to address. I presented a full draft of this paper at UCL’s Conflict and Change PhD workshop, and plan to submit this paper to Perspectives on Politics or the Journal of Global Security Studies.

I plan to submit the empirical papers of my dissertation that address the remaining questions to general interest political science journals (ajps, jop, bjps), but if that does not pan out I will consider both comparative and communications subfield journals.

(Do I note that Hertie’s requirements for defense do not have publication requirements? No, but keep this in mind for potential Q&A)

Main Takeaways

We should pay attention to how digital autocrats manipulate information on foreign platforms.

Empirical findings

Foreign platforms are becoming safer spaces for overt state influence.
Pro-government actors without visible affiliations face limited constraints.

Implications for democracy

Impacts on the domestic politics of targeted countries go beyond elections.
Similar strategies are used by contentious actors in democracies.

Contributions to ADVODID

LGBTQ+ and Anti-LGBTQ+ Advocacy in Digital Democracy

[Anti-]LGBTQ+ Advocacy \(\leftrightarrow\) Politics

Global increase in Anti-LGBTQ+ legislation in 2023
Anti-LGBTQ+ legislation spans multiple issue areas
Social media accelerates online and offline organizing around LGBTQ+ politics
(Ritholtz, Koh, and Gohdes 2022)

Research Questions

Use

How are openly LGBTQ+ politicians represented in online and offline debates about LGBTQ+ policy?
Are some interest group types more responsive to online debates about LGBTQ+ discourse compared to others?

Impact

What are the effects of politicians’ social media discussions around LGBTQ+ issues on offline and offline protest participation?
Compared to anti-LGBTQ+ groups, are pro-LGBTQ+ groups more likely to respond to social media calls to action?

Democratic Consequences

What is the relationship between citizens’ participation in anti-LGBTQ+ discourse on social media and support for right-wing policies?
How does a government’s technical capacity factor into politicians’ involvement in online discussions around LGBTQ+ politics?

Collaborations at Kings College London

ADVODID

Theory Development ↔︎️ Computational Methods
Ties to SoMeRep: Underrepresented groups and political discourse

Department of Political Economy

Research Groups: Quantitative Political Economy (QPE), Comparative Politics
Initiatives for early career researchers

Faculty of Social Science & Public Policy

Global Network on Extremism & Technology (Department of War Studies)

ADVODID - In addition to variety of computational methods in social data science, also have experience in theory-driven research using computational methods, which would be especially helpful for WP3 Democratic Consequences. (in line with my dissertation research also the most relevant) - In the context of the Social Media and Political Representation project that Anne is a PI on, you conducted field experiments to study how the gender and ethnicity of social media users affect the level of incivility faced by underrepresented groups in political discourse. If this is of interest to affiliated resaerchers, I could envision replicating this sort of experiment in the context of the research agenda that I am interested in building around LGBTQ+ politics.

Dept - Research groups: Also consulting with Political Theory Research Group on questions related to WP3 - I’m not sure what resources are available for early career researchers (interested in discussing in Q&A), but I have been invested in peer mentorship in many ways throughout my PhD and would be interested in starting some of the initiatives that I was involved in in the department if they don’t exist already. Strong support from PhD researchers and postdocs in the Centre, some of the highlights of my time as a PhD researcher come from being involved in PhD workshops (that have mostly been based in the UK)

GNET - As I previously mentioned, I’ve published work with GNET situated in the Department of War Studies at King’s, which welcomes contributions on anything related to online violence, radicalization, extremism etc. and I could envision this being a relevant venue for some of the outputs from research linked to the ERC project on challenges to democracy

Thank you!

koh@hertie-school.org

https://allisonkoh.github.io/

@allisonwkoh@mastodon.social🎓

@allisonwkoh@fosstodon.org📊

@allisonkoh_

References

Ritholtz, Samuel, Allison Koh, and Anita Gohdes. 2022. “Fanning the Flames of Hate: The Transnational Diffusion of Online Anti-LGBT+ Rhetoric and Offline Mobilisation.” GNET.

Contentious Actors on Social Media andImplications for Advocacy in Digital Democracy

Allison Koh

Background

Current Research

Pro-Government Social Media on the Global Stage

How do authoritarian regimes use social media to shape the global public sphere?

How do authoritarian regimes use social media to shape the global public sphere?

How do authoritarian regimes use social media to shape the global public sphere?

Main Takeaways

We should pay attention to how digital autocrats manipulate information on foreign platforms.

Empirical findings

Implications for democracy

Contributions to ADVODID

[Anti-]LGBTQ+ Advocacy \(\leftrightarrow\) Politics

Research Questions

Use

Impact

Democratic Consequences

Collaborations at Kings College London

ADVODID

Department of Political Economy

Faculty of Social Science & Public Policy

Thank you!

References

Contentious Actors on Social Media and
Implications for Advocacy in Digital Democracy